Arsenal have begun exploring candidates for a potential sporting director role as part of a shake-up of the club’s off-field structure.

Dick Law has liaised closely with manager Arsene Wenger on player negotiations and contracts since 2009 and, while he would initially work with any appointment, it is understood that he is ready to step away from his current position in the longer-term.

The idea would also be to create a wider football operations role, with possible responsibilities stretching to shaping and fine-tuning the structures around sports science, medicine, scouting and recruitment, the academy and logistics.

It all further points to Arsenal planning for the changes that will follow the eventual departure of Wenger, although sources have stressed that this process is about the long-term and not specifically linked to whether the Frenchman stays beyond this summer.

There has been no particular urgency as yet with the enquiries that have started about candidates but it is a role that remains more common in Europe and Arsenal would look abroad as well as in England.

Should Wenger leave this year, it is likely that the process would be accelerated and a sporting director figure would come in with a new manager, who is almost certain to take a more narrow focus of responsibilities.

Yet Wenger has also indicated that he is willing to evolve how he operates and, with Law’s long-term position uncertain, there would still be logic to appointing someone to work alongside both Law and Wenger with a view to developing a broader role in future years. Chief executive Ivan Gazidis is understood to be exploring the options, but there has long been an outside sense that Wenger would benefit from more senior staff around him to take away some responsibilities and also challenge existing thinking.

With the retirement of Sir Alex Ferguson, Wenger is just about the last of the managers whose responsibilities extend far beyond simply training the first-team but involve setting the entire footballing culture of the club and making just about every key decision.

Arsenal do still believe that it makes sense to have a strong managerial figure who is the final arbiter of many football-related decisions, such as first-team logistics and signings, but there will be an inevitable shift once Wenger leaves.

Wenger himself has also stressed that he is ready to look at how the club can do things better and has supported change and major investment over recent years that relate to recruitment, sports science, medicine and data. His stance towards the prospect of extending his contract has also appeared more determined of late.

Yet no decision has been reached and Arsenal made a point in their statement last week of stressing that Wenger’s future would be determined mutually. There has been a perception that Wenger alone will decide and that the club’s directors are passive players in what happens next, but the reality is that they have always unequivocally backed Wenger because they believed that he was the best man to take the club forward.

The final judgment on whether that remains the case may well wait now until the end of the season, although the club have been working increasingly on their succession plan. They are also currently in the process of appointing a successor to Andries Jonker as academy director.